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Philippines

Travelogue

Wednesday The perks of staying in a hotel with the reception and restaurant areas under construction include getting free room service, because there is no other place to eat breakfast. Breakfast was delivered to our room as we put the final touches on our packing, by none other then Edgard the security guard. Edgard was the only staff person we had seen the whole trip, but he was stellar at his job, and at all the other jobs around the hotel that had fallen to him. When it was time to leave, Edgard refused to let us carry our bags the ten

Philippines

Cute Animals, Travelogue

Tuesday In Palau, I heard that some of the Chinese tour agencies used to offer phony tours to the unknowing. They would separate the Chinese tourists out at the airport, those who had been to Palau previously and those who hadn't. The ones who had never been before would get an abbreviated tour around all the top landmarks, only the places they took them to weren't actually those landmarks. They would go to the bridge and tell them that was the famous natural arch. They would take them to the nearest corner on the reef and tell them that was Blue

Philippines

Scuba Diving, Travelogue

A year ago when when I first started writing about our move to Palau, I didn't realize that the name for the people and the language of that country was spelled Palauan (thanks to a red underline from spell-check) and not Palawan (no red line). Come to find out several months later, Palawan is its own island in the Philippines. There weren't very many companies that paid for commercials in Palau, so most of the commercial breaks on tv were filled with ads for the other shows on that channel. Every now and again though, the Philippines or Thailand would air

Philippines

Crazy Cat Lady, Foodie, Travelogue

Saturday Afternoon Our tricycle driver, who turned out to be a very pleasant fellow, drove us through the Philippine countryside and back to the Alona Beach area and up the dirt road to the Bee Farm. I jumped out of the little cab affixed to the motorbike and ran in to see if I could get a room for Fletch and myself. We had just ditched our plans of staying in a dodgy shack in the middle of the woods, something straight out of a horror film, and opted to stay someplace nicer and closer to the airport for our last

Philippines

Misadventures

I recently jumped ahead in my storytelling a bit to bring you the breaking news of Tropical Cyclone Winston, but now that all that excitement has passed, let's return to where we left off in the Philippines on the island of Bohol.  Late Friday The sun was low in the sky when we got back to Oasis, so when Suzanne and Ian invited us for one last drink, we politely declined, deciding that it would probably be a good idea to try and get where we were going. We were heading into the middle of the jungle after all, to a place

Philippines

Cute Animals, Top Wildlife Experiences, Travelogue

Friday Planning our travels through the Philippines turned out to be a lot more difficult than I had thought it would be. With over 7000 islands, and each promising something unique and better than the last, it proved an impossible task to narrow the choices down enough to accommodate a 12 day schedule. Eventually we settled on four nights in Malapascua, four in Bohol, and four on Palawan (which honestly is a place deserving of 12 nights by itself). Everyone raved about Bohol. Between the beach, the zip-lining, the Chocolate hills, the Loboc river with its own assortment of activities, it

Philippines

Scuba Diving, Travelogue

Wednesday They say to schedule at least half a day for any domestic traveling within the Philippines, if not a full day. They are not kidding. Definitely er on the side of a full day. We arranged to travel to Bohol from Malapascua with our Dutch friends, Ian and Suzanne. Suzanne was awesome and planned out the entire trip, from our transfer from the dive shop, to the ferry from Cebu to Bohol, to rooming arrangements. Some mention was made of staying at the Bee Farm, which I liked the idea of very much, having heard a lot about it, but

Philippines

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Monday  We signed up for the early morning thresher shark dive again. Beautiful, cartoonish sharks with long, ribbony tails and big, puppy dog eyes were a good enough reason to drag my sleepy butt out of bed at 5am. We were late leaving because one of the guys didn’t show up to work, and as such most of the thresher sharks were already gone when we descended into the chilly water. We still saw enough to make the dive worth it, just not as many as the day before. Of course about halfway through the dive when I’d given up on

Philippines

Scuba Diving, Sharks

Sunday Evolution turned out to be a wonderful little gem of a dive resort. There were three main dive shops that Lonely Planet recommended we go through. Fletch did a nice job of emailing the three of them until we were able to narrow it down to Evolution Dive Resort. That was definitely a good call. The beach front room was everything you want in a room when you’re divining. A big, clean, comfortable bed, and an extra bed to lay out all your stuff on, a clean bathroom with a hot shower, and a little balcony to hang out wet

Philippines

Guide Book, Travelogue

Saturday There’s nothing like waking up on the cold, tile floor of the airport. I didn’t really sleep much, so I was too exhausted to move. But since I wasn’t moving, I was gradually becoming colder and colder, making it impossible to actually sleep. In an attempt to warm up, I sat cross-legged and cross-armed and was so sleepy that I folded forward over myself and fell asleep for what could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes. I’m not sure which, but it was long enough to wake up with pins and needles in my feet. The joys of traveling.